The op-ed itself is a jumble of different points, from the idea that Congress and the intelligence community need to come to a “balance” over the role of each to a plea not to investigate or prosecute “public servants who did their duty pursuant to the legal guidance provided” on — he doesn’t specify, but — torture or warrantless surveillance or other stuff. Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) may have Panetta shook. So what to make of this?

All of Panetta’s mishmash of points go in one direction. It’s all stuff CIA wants to hear in an era of tumult and possible criminal investigation. Just count all the chest-puffing references to how rad the agency is. “Our present tools are effective, we use them aggressively to go after our enemies, and Congress has been briefed on them. … The men and women of the CIA truly are America’s first line of defense. … The time has come for both Democrats and Republicans to take a deep breath and recognize the reality of what happened after Sept. 11, 2001.” If there remains doubt that Panetta could be a forceful advocate for an agency that he didn’t really have much experience with, the op-ed ought to remove it. It reads like an attempt to stick up for his troops against a particularly annoying Democratic Congress.

Except for one thing. Read this paragraph:

The time has come for both Democrats and Republicans to take a deep breath and recognize the reality of what happened after Sept. 11, 2001. The question is not the sincerity or the patriotism of those who were dealing with the aftermath of Sept. 11. The country was frightened, and political leaders were trying to respond as best they could. Judgments were made. Some of them were wrong. But that should not taint those public servants who did their duty pursuant to the legal guidance provided. The last election made clear that the public wanted to move in a new direction.

That’s not sticking up for the frontline interrogators who carried out the abusive treatment of, say, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. That’s Panetta sticking up for the CIA senior leadership under George Tenet who helped design, implement and protect it. And that’s much different from what Panetta’s said in the past.

In a response to Feingold obtained by The Washington Independent, Blair attempted to clear up an apparent confusion. The intelligence chief said was talking about generally “err[ing] on the side of working with and notifying the Congress,” he wrote, in murky cases where notification obligations are a matter of “judgment” — and not making a statement about the legality of not informing Congress.

Here’s the text of a letter on Blair sent Feingold today:

Thank you for your July 17, 2009 letter regarding notification requirements to the Congressional intelligence oversight committees. In my discussion with the Washington Post, I never offered a legal judgment about whether the CIA was required to brief the Congressional oversight committees on this specific program; I merely indicated that whether a particular matter requires notification to the Congress often involves the exercise of judgment. My view is the following: If there are questions about whether the Congress should be notified, we err on the side of working with and notifying the Congress, and I believe that Director [Leon] Panetta did the right thing in notifying the intelligence oversight committees of this program within 24 hours of learning of it. We view Congress as a partner.

I appreciate your concerns about these important issues and share your desire to improve the transparency and openness between the Intelligence Community and the Congress.

Feingold had requested legal analysis from Blair and his general counsel about withholding information on the still-secret program from Congress.

Update: This post has been edited for clarity.

After cafeful consideration and consultation with the Ranking Minority Member and other members of the Committee, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence will conduct an investigation into possible violations of federal law, including the National Security Act of 1947.

This investigation will focus on the core issue of how the congressional intelligence committees and Congress are kept fully and currently informed. To this end, the investigation will examine several issues, including the program discussed during Director Panetta’s June 24th notification and whether there was any past decision or direction to withhold information from the Committee.

Holt said he believes the investigation, which he also called a review, should be as intense and comprehensive as the probe conducted more than 30 years ago — in the wake of the Watergate scandal — by a special committee headed by U.S. Sen. Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat.

Holt is basically thinking out loud here. He said similar things to me on Tuesday, referencing the Church and Pike commissions of the 1970s. He’s got no proposal — yet — for launching an “intense and comprehensive” probe of secret CIA activities like the assassination thing. (Oh yeah, and that was apparently getting revived inside the agency when Director Leon Panetta shut it down.) And who knows whether other members of Congress would be interested in reviving such a probe.

But this would cause the CIA to hyperventilate. The scandal-revealing Church and Pike commissions divided the history of the CIA into before and after epochs, with the post-Church/Pike period being one of much greater congressional scrutiny. (There weren’t any intelligence committees, for instance, before the investigations.) The biggest thing the CIA fears is another 9/11. The second biggest thing the CIA fears is another Church/Pike.

There’s an irony that needs to be pointed out. People like Dick Cheney watched Church/Pike with horror, considering the increased congressional scrutiny to be disastrous for CIA morale and efficacy. Cheney set to work in the Bush administration pushing the CIA out from the strictures of the post-Church/Pike era. But the results of actions could very well be a second Church/Pike.

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